As with many other processes, the desire to increase the throughput and efficiency of present systems for producing continuous strand mats has been felt. The physical properties of the mat can be greatly affected by increasing the throughput of the feeder and/or the line speed of the collection conveyor, especially in those processes wherein, contemporaneously, continuous glass filaments are produced, gathered into a plurality of bundles and deposited on a moving conveyor as a mat wherein the bundles or strands arranged in a planar array are deposited across the width of the conveyor.
For example, by merely increasing the line speed of the collection conveyor, the mat produced may have more tensile strength in the machine direction as opposed to the cross machine direction.
The present invention provides a system wherein the throughput of the system can be modified such as increasing the bushing throughput and/or conveyor speed while achieving the desired tensile strength characteristics.
The present invention permits the filaments to be deposited upon the conveyor as bundles of filaments and/or many smaller bundle or individual filaments to provide many choices as to the characteristics of the mat being formed.
Further, the present invention reorients the filaments/strands in a diverging array that is substantially perpendicular to the plane of the band of strands entering the distribution system to permit the strands/filaments to be distributed across the full width of the mat without moving the distribution means.